


the hour/the spot/the look/the words

by planethunter



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, and every time i see a post about the p&p parallels in good omens i just lose my mind, crowley is touch starved and in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-11 22:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19118548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planethunter/pseuds/planethunter
Summary: Crowley watches Pride and Prejudice (2005) and it spurs a realisation.





	the hour/the spot/the look/the words

**Author's Note:**

> this is about the YEARNING and the pure unadulterated JOY of being in love and being gay

It is around this time of year that they start to show a lot of films on television. Between Christmas and New Year, when people apparently have little else to do but spoon the box of Quality Streets (that by now was two-thirds empty wrappers) and sit in the comfortable glow of a franchise sequel or animated special for hours on end.

Crowley had never paid much attention to what it was he was watching - most of it was background noise, anyhow - and when he did, the choice was never pre-planned, he simply submitted to the mercy of whatever the screen decided to present to him when the set flickered to life. It was quite the opposite case when Aziraphale was around, who would tuck himself into a corner of the sofa and flick thoroughly through the television magazine, stopping occasionally on a page and furrowing his brow ever so slightly as he read the summary, before either dismissing it (more common) or folding the page over and turning it to Crowley, quashing the silence with a quiet "this one looks good", for Crowley to give a thoughtful hum in agreement (less common). Of course, Aziraphale still liked to maintain that he didn't like television at all, and only bared it to humour Crowley, and so Crowley would humour him in return by never commenting on the way he'd catch the angel smiling at some heartfelt moment in a rom-com in his occasional sideward glances.

Aziraphale isn't here tonight. Nor is he at the bookshop, otherwise Crowley would have probably gone to pester him by doing the exact same thing as he was doing in his own flat, only instead in front of a much more disused television, and warmer. He's up north, somewhere. Burnley, perhaps - in fact definitely, because Crowley remembers asking him _what the hell do they need you in Burnley for?_ And made some joke about it being somewhere often overlooked by God, to which Aziraphale had replied _then that's probably why_.

Tonight, therefore, is a programme lottery. Crowley has settled himself rather seamlessly into the upholstery - perhaps if he stays there long enough he would melt into it, unable to decipher where he ends and cheap leather begins (Hell knows why he bought it cheap, he has the means for a much nicer one, one made from a much classier cow). Nonetheless, he still feels in the back of his mind that he isn't quite comfortable, and shifts his back slightly as means of addressing it. It doesn't do much.

On the command of a remote, the screen transforms from black to one of those channels that only shows films, all day, every day. There are tons of them now, he'd noticed, more than any human of an average lifespan would need. _I could sit here forever_ , he thinks, _I could sit here forever and watch Film4 and do nothing else all day and no one would stop me_. Aziraphale probably would. He'd probably say something about it being a meaningless waste of so much time and try and convince (not tempt) Crowley to come and do something more exciting with him, though exciting to Aziraphale could be a café they'd visited five times before or a mundane National Trust property. Crowley would humour him most of the time, but maybe one time he would get him to stay and watch something - anything - with him. It didn't matter what they watched, maybe they could watch two things - three things - until one or both of them fell asleep. Maybe they'd curl up together on the cheap leather sofa, roosted in either corner among the cushions, or maybe next to each other. Maybe Crowley would lay his head in Aziraphale's lap and feel nothing but the present - no future, no past, just here. But he'd have to get him to stay first.

The film he's landed about ten minutes into is _Pride and Prejudice_. The title rings a bell, and it takes him another few minutes of idle rifling through his memories to recall where he'd last heard it: 1817, in a small bookshop in west London. He'd been lingering around the area under the pretence of tempting a few passing townsfolk into petty theft, but of course the real reason hinged more on the off-chance that Aziraphale would make an appearance. A woman and a man were discussing it by the window, passing an edition between them with careful hands, as though it were priceless, when in fact it was eighteen shillings and sixteen more copies were piled beside the counter. Crowley has never read it, but is aware from his choice of company that it is supposed to be very good. That in mind, he settles for it, and begins trying to pick up what he'd missed from the beginning.

A woman with dark hair and striking, sharp features plays the main role, Elizabeth. Lizzie, at some points, Miss Bennet at others. She is in love with a tall, sad looking man, Darcy. _Sad because he was given a girl's name_ , Crowley thinks to himself, not realising for a considerable length of time that Darcy is his surname. Elizabeth is in love with Darcy, but she makes it clear to everybody else - including the man himself - that she hates him. In every scene where she is confronted with him, Crowley fixates on her eyes, the subtle shifts in her expression - the doubt, the wonder. He watches their tentative dance, facing each other off, circling each other and this great and dazzling thing that has come between them that both wanted to turn away from and dive into at the same time. Crowley watches it all, in awe.

One of his hands rests over the other, the tips of his fingers cold. He watches as Darcy takes Elizabeth's hand, gentle, like handling a bird, their fingers curling over each other's. He mimics the gesture with his own hands, brushing his fingers over one another. Slowly, slowly closing them to a grasp. Opening them again, brushing his knuckles with his thumb. He continues, back, and forward, watching with mild fascination. The sensation relaxes him, like a trance, and he only feels some sensation building inside him when it had risen so high that he had to sigh to release it. Now his hands lie still, holding each other limply. He releases them, letting his fingers brush past each other on the way. When he looks up, the television had cut to adverts.

He lies his hands out either side of him on the sofa, stretching his fingers out before resting them back on the leather. The room around him is suddenly very cold, and the brightness of the television screen only serves to accentuate the newly present darkness that has followed the sunset. Crowley stands, with no preconceived intention of going anywhere in particular, and feels a strange but unmistakable sense of urgency.

 

***

 

Burnley is rather a godless place, which is why it just so happens to be one of Crowley's favourite places to visit. There is not much in the way of entertainment, however, and the residents fear very little, so in many ways a demon is just as obsolete as a god. Maybe it's for the best, he'd once heard from someone about how living somewhere with year-round miserable weather can have a severe effect on one's mood (incidentally, too, from the same person, about how miserable people make the best music. Perhaps there's a correlation there somewhere).

Pulling the Bentley up to the kerb outside a nondescript newsagent, a sudden feeling of lightness rushes through him, and he squeezes his hands tight around the steering wheel. It's a sort of anxiety, anticipation - but of what he doesn't know. Not all together unpleasant either, more excitement than dread, but it still catches him by surprise. Simultaneously aware - painfully aware, of himself, his body, his mind, a tingling over his skin that speaks of what is to come, like it exists separate from him in the future -  and unaware. Unaware, as though he is moving through some sort of unreality, like this isn't really him but just the him he desires to be, and he is watching the performance from elsewhere. He swallows, and with his thumb brushes the side of his index finger where it rests on the steering wheel, watching specks of mist drifting through the glow of the headlights and back out into oblivion.

Now he waits.

Fifty-seven minutes later, Aziraphale opens the passenger door.

"What are you doing here?" He says it as if worried someone will overhear, but not with irritation, and definitely not with surprise, "at this hour-" he pulls the door shut, the car rocking gently with the force, and sits in a brief moment of contemplation looking out over the headlight beams that are now suspending rain. "You're parked on a bus stop."

Crowley doesn't look at him, everything feels very close. "What buses run this late?"

Aziraphale doesn't answer, but does give Crowley a mildly incredulous look. A _please_ , maybe, if he thinks about it in the right way. Crowley too turns to meet his eyes, a half-hearted and certainly hopeless challenge, and sees Aziraphale's hair and the shoulders of his jacket dampened by the rain. He turns away, edges the car forward about fifty yards, and stops again.

"Why are you here?"

The dismissive response comes like clockwork, before Crowley even knows what he is saying, "I was just in the area." It offers him brief relief, very brief, before the silence becomes too testing for him to continue to put up a fight, to continue dancing around in ever-diminishing circles. He can feel the weight of Aziraphale's gaze, his suffocatingly virtuous patience, "fine, I wanted to tell you something."

"I'm coming back to London tomorrow. Or you could have just phoned."

"I know."

Aziraphale's soft and careful voice then becomes laced with concern, and Crowley can hardly bear it. "Is everything all right?"

It twists roots around his heart and all of a sudden Crowley feels very dizzy. "Yeah, everything's fine," the chirpiness of his own voice almost catches him by surprise. He taps the steering wheel a couple of times, before reaching to turn on the windscreen wipers. The rain only seems to get heavier. "I watched _Pride and Prejudice,"_ he says finally.

The wipers squeak across the glass in front of them. Crowley is so certain Aziraphale is going to say _you came all the way up to Burnley in the middle of the night to tell me you watched Pride and Prejudice?_ That he almost says it himself at the same time, but he's relieved he doesn't, because what Aziraphale actually says is, "oh. It's a good film."

Crowley wishes Aziraphale had said y _ou came all the way up to Burnley in the middle of the night to tell me you watched Pride and Prejudice?_ Because then he could have said, _yes_. But he didn't, and so they sit for a few long moments in silence.

They can only have been seconds, those moments, the digital clock display doesn't change from 00:42, and Crowley is certain because his eyes are very keenly fixed on it. He hears Aziraphale shift in his seat and looks up instinctively, to be met with the angel's hands reaching out towards him. For a split second, he's blind with panic.

"You shouldn't drive in your sunglasses at night," Aziraphale says, the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, as he slowly removes them from Crowley's face. Crowley blinks stupidly at the light, then only stares at him. He feels as if his entire chest is gaseous and someone has just wafted their hand through it, the places on his temples where Aziraphale's fingertips brushed his skin tingling, "you can't see a thing-"

He barely gets the final word out before Crowley lunges forward, grabs the back of his head and kisses him all in one instant. For a moment, Aziraphale is stunned, unable to move, before his senses return to him, and once he starts to kiss him back Crowley's grip tightens on him, but is never anything other than gentle. His whole being is a flurry of emotion, of _life_ , and the longer Aziraphale's shock is given to wear off the greater joy the angel pours into it. _Relief_ , Crowley thinks, _relief and joy_. When they pull apart its barely worth the atoms between them. They sit, breathing heavily, Crowley's knee pushed against the gearbox, foreheads pressed together and eyes closed, and for a while the only sound is the muffled patter of rain against the windows.

Crowley opens his eyes, and slowly looks up to Aziraphale's. He's never been closer, and Crowley marvels at the detail: the depth of his eyes, his eyelashes, the softness of his skin, the sensation of where their noses are pressed together, where their foreheads are touching. How close their mouths are, not even inches, the warmth of the back of his neck against Crowley's hand, the feeling of his hair in his fingers.

"Crowley-" Aziraphale starts.

"I love you," the words tumble out, breathless, like it's the last opportunity they'll get for millennia. If previous experience is anything to go by, Crowley thinks, they are more than justified in believing that.

Aziraphale holds either side of Crowley's face in his hands, and Crowley's heart physically aches with the touch just when he thought it had reached its limit. The angel studies his gaze, this revelation, in quiet wonder. "Most ardently?"

"What?"

"It's-" Aziraphale fails to stifle his laugh, "it's _Pride and Prejudice_."

"Oh. Well, I didn’t see to the end, so-"

Crowley had actually seen the scene in question, but he'd been so focused on watching faces that the dialogue slipped through his mind entirely. There's not much time to think before Aziraphale pulls him in again, and this time Crowley can't stop smiling into the kiss, letting everything that was pent up over the centuries be heard. He wonders if anyone else in the universe has experienced this, if everything Jane Austen and all the rest of them have been grasping helplessly to heaven for exists now under his fingers, on his lips. Aziraphale's hand moves from his face, to his hair, to the back of his neck, and deepens the kiss in attempt to account for his uncontrollable giggling.

"I love you too," he says when they finally break apart, eyes locked onto Crowley's and flooded with joy. "So much."

 

***

 

He thinks to himself, as he's pulling out onto the road, pressing the ball of his foot into the accelerator, _six thousand years_. There's a grin on his face he can't subside. Six thousand years, all those wars, creations, civilisations, all the stars he'd watched be born and collapse in supernovae, the Armageddons he'd helped avert, _and it all winds up to this_ \- _a few words in the front of a Bentley on a forgettable street in Lancashire. All of it was for this._

Out on the motorway, they meet no other traffic. All Crowley hears is the whirr of the engine, and all he feels is a soft hand around his, a thumb stroking over his knuckles.

**Author's Note:**

>  _"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."_ \- Jane Austen, _Pride and Prejudice._


End file.
